The Lady Confesses (1945)

Sorry, this movie sucks

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Showing on the Moonlight Movies Channel. The only name i recognize in here is Hugh Beaumont... Dad, from Leave it to Beaver. Larry Craig's wife, thought long-dead, shows up and threatens the new girl-friend. then gets bumped off. A couple good songs, probably actually sung by Claudia Drake in this one, since most of the film takes place in a night club. The coppers question everyone, but one guys tells a different story than everyone else. A film noir... except that it feels like even the writers didn't know who dunnit until almost through filming. Suddenly, someone starts doing stuff, and now we know they must be involved. It's pretty good, but gets cheesy right near the end. It's ok. Directed by Sam Newfield, long-time bigshot at PRC film company.

Shortly before she is to be married, a young woman gets a visit from her fiancé's wife, who had been missing for seven years and presumed dead. Soon both the girl and her fiancé find themselves mixed up with a crooked nightclub owner, gangsters and murder.It's a nifty little very low budget film.Will keep your interest more or less.Not sure why they cant make these sorts of movies today. With video being so cheap it should be a shoe in.Guess no one is writing this stuff anymore.Best part -- the guy who played the father on the TV show Dennis the Menance is in it!

I rarely give these programmers (especially PRC) more than a five or six rating, but this one rises a notch above on the strength of a decent plot and some twists that keep you guessing. Unfortunately, the biggest puzzler of the story is dispensed with in the first five minutes. Where WAS Norma Craig for the past seven years? If you dwell on that bit of information you'll wind up too distracted for the rest of the story.I've seen a few flicks with Hugh Beaumont before he became Mr. Cleaver, and if that's the only thing you know him by, this one will probably shock you. He turns out to be every woman's worst nightmare once you fall out of his favor, and he usually sends his regrets by wire. I thought he did a pretty good job of playing the drunk in the early going. Did you notice how he slurred his speech and kind of bobbled around when he walked? Just the way I get when I've had one too many, which makes me think he might have actually been lubricated when he did those scenes.On the flip side, Lucky Brandon (Edmund MacDonald) wasn't such a bad guy after all when you think about it. However isn't it just a bit too convenient that he goes to repay Norma the ten grand she loaned him on the night she was killed? So what happened with the dough? That's what I want to know.You know, the Captain (Emmett Vogan) made a point of stating that Larry Craig's (Beaumont) alibi was just a little too perfect a couple of times and for the sake of the story it was. However you really have to suspend some disbelief over the idea that Larry woke up out of his drunken stupor, went over to Norma's place to kill her, and then returned to the 7-11 Club to go to sleep all over again. Seems to me like the adrenaline would have kicked in by then unless he was faking the whole drunk routine. Which makes him a better actor than I was going to give him credit for.

This low budget PRC epic is a modestly entertaining murder mystery about a man who strangles women. "Dead Men Walk" director Sam Newfield and scenarists Helen Martin and Irwin Franklyn pull off one of the oldest and slickest tricks in the mystery genre: the use of the red herring. The big surprise in "The Lady Confesses" occurs well past the half-way point of what seems like a grown-up version of a Nancy Drew mystery.Vicki McGuire (Mary Beth Hughes of "The Oxbow Incident") is planning to marry Larry Craig (Hugh Beaumont of "The Blue Dahlia") when his long lost wife Norma (Barbara Slater of "Monsieur Verdoux") shows up to tell her that the marriage won't happen. According to Larry, his wife Norma and he haven't laid eyes on each other in seven years. Larry plans to wed Vicki until Norma throws a monkey wrench into the works. No sooner has Norma been in town than she is killed. The police learn that she was strangled by a wire. This sounds like a precursor to a 1970's Italian murder mystery. Captain Brown (Emmett Vogan of "Ride, Vaquero!") starts snooping around town to see whose alibi won't hold water. Everybody at a local night club--Club 711--assures the captain that Larry was passed out in the singer's room when the murder occurred. The catch is that nobody actually saw Larry Craig sleeping off a drunk on a couch. During a scene in a restaurant, Larry explains to Captain Brown that Norma inherited her money from her mother. Meanwhile, the most suspicious person, night club owner Lucky Brandon (Edmund MacDonald of "Detour") behaves even more suspiciously. All of this prompts Vicki to launch her own investigation and Captain Brown doesn't dissuade her from acting like a sleuth. The surprise is actually a matter of performance because the last person that you think murdered Norma is the last person you should suspect.